​Mowing. Spring time’s gift to all people with OCD tendencies. For people with those tendencies such as myself, having a yard like mine can cause some serious headaches. I’ve written about this a couple of times. As a matter of fact, it was part of my first blog. The theme was basically that I was caving to the madness around here, and today’s blog is further proof, but it will also show a progression of improvement with the different generations of wives in this family.

First of all, my sister-in-law sent me a message the other day explaining her predicament while mowing the lawn. It was basically a dangerous, tall grass scavenger hunt. She found multiple things hidden in the grass, all before they hit the mower blades, thankfully. The list included cow bones, old running shoes, a piece of a hair brush, an extension cord, a hammer, and a machete. A Machete! That must mean someone attempted to mow the grass old style when it was too long to use the mower and gave up. It is completely normal for our husbands to leave something like a machete in tall grass. There are no barefoot walks around here.

I have had the same problem a few times. Before we moved to our own personal construction zone heaven, we had a flat yard that would have been a breeze to mow, unless you waited to mow for months at a time. Lots of things would turn up in the tall grass and come shooting out of the lawn mower at 100 miles an hour. Car parts, cans, fence wires, scrap leftover electrical wire, and even fully functioning electrical wire that hadn’t been buried yet. Not cool!

Once my husband tried to brush hog the backyard when it got really out of hand and ended up hitting a stump and breaking the mower. I then decided to weedeat the whole thing and found that bees had created a nest out of the old grass matted on the ground below the tall weedy grass currently looming over the yard. It involved some tricky business to get out of that one, but I only got stung once.

Now we’re getting a little better about keeping up with it, even though it doesn’t look like it. The mower has a bent blade so one side has a down-to-the-ground cut, while the other side has a nonexistent cut. I pick up the yard frequently to save my husband the guilt of running over a plastic dinosaur that has been left in the yard because he’d never be forgiven.

There is hope for the future though. In 30 years, I hope to be like my mother-in-law, the proud owner of a half decent mower that takes care of business. My father-in-law complains that their yard is getting bigger and bigger. My grandmother-in-law has it even better. She’s complained to me that, “Fred does a terrible job (of mowing), just terrible. He misses that spot and that spot. He doesn’t even try.”

Now someone else mows her lawn. If I just wait 55-60 years, I’ll get someone else to mow my lawn too.